God is love, but He is also wrath, Judgment, and
hatred. No sense mincing words about it.
I disagree w/ JJ, that God hates people today. I hold forth the Gospel to be that the Cross took away the enmity that exists in God's own mind between fallen mankind and Himself, whether any of us accepts that free gift or not.
But isn't everything that exists a part of God's omnibenevolent nature and manifestation? Anything that exists is a part of God (via his creation)?
Not the way I understand it. I cover that in my first post; please clarify if something's still not clear as I covered a lot of ground there.
And yet there are things in the world that aren't good(sin). Here I don't understand whether, by said definition, evil is not a part of God (and so indepedent of an omnipotent being?), or rather that everything that is, including good and bad - both of which exist - are a part of him
I hold the book of Job to be the oldest in the Bible. The first thing the book does is lays out that good and evil are NOT equal yet opposite elements of one whole. In other words, God purposefully smashes the concept of yin and yang, which was mankind's crowning understanding at that time. It is also worth noting this was hidden from Job.
This gets more complicated by the fact that evil can exist in the spiritual realm, without physical manifestation. As humans, this should be easy for all of us to understand. We can have
horrible thoughts, but not act on them. If we have propensity to act on them but don't, God calls this "iniquity." It's not sin until we act on it, but God still knows our iniquities and Judges us for those too. :o
Fortunately, "God laid the iniquity of us all on [Jesus]" while He was on the Cross so that part's covered too.
Even
more complicated is the fact that God says "woe to him who says God will not do evil, nor will He do good." Sorry to bring this up since it loses the clarity I tried to create so far, but do realize my first post conveyed
my understanding, not contained in Scripture.
You're asking good questions, and they're tough ones. Part of your understanding needs to include that none of us see God perfectly, and whatever of Him we can perceive is such a TINY portion, that
still completely overwhelms all our abilities!
Do you mean that God's morality is at least somewhat incomprehesible to humans,
I didn't say that but this shows we have communication. We can only comprehend God's
Judgments by His written word, the Bible. Morality isn't a word He uses. Additionally, we each have a conscience and God deals with us in that realm, but it's not concrete like His written word. There is a reason the 10 commandments were written by the finger of God, in stone!
so much so that some sinful things feel good? Conversely, why would only some of God's demands be 'natural'? Shouldn't they all? Or perhaps, again, evil is seperate from the all omnipotent God? Is suffering, sin and deliberate temptation a part of his nature or not?
"God tempts no man, and cannot be tempted by evil." When I put something in quotes, normally it's Bible. I signify this as a way of saying it's not merely my own understanding or explanation, but God's authoritative answer on the subject.
The rest of your questions in the snip I quoted come down to our fallen nature. We do not exist as God initially created us. This holds true for the rest of this world as well; the point being that sin is far more awful than seems likely to us. That's really the root of ALL your questions here. The optimist in me says you're concerned with these things because God is beginning to show you the awfulness of your own sin, and this is the beginning of God showing Himself to YOU! I mean, why else would you care?
If you want to read about the vision God gave me showing me the awfulness of my own sin, it's in the sub-forum "dreams and visions" within "edification." I titled the thread "Bouncing like a yo-yo."
Why does evil 'HAVE' to be a part of the self-expression of such an all-loving being? That seems pretty paradoxal, actually..
But again, I still wonder what reason there is for evil to exist at all and why it would need to be covered
Again... why? Lucifer was lured away by the evil God created, correct?
Hopefully a careful reading of everything I've written answers these questions for you, or you at least see MY explanation for them, that God showed me, to let me share Peace with Him. Going further, I'll point out the difference between "created" and "made." As I understand it, "created" refers to it existing in God's mind, while "made" = physical creation. So I don't believe God had to create evil at all, and I don't think He did. This seems to be the point of the Garden of Eden, does it not? They knew good! That's all they knew. No evil.
The existence of evil that I referred to as being covered by Lucifer would be a non-created, non-physical spiritual phenomenon only. Lucifer was a Spiritual being, originally. He "left his first estate." Why he did this, why he was lured away,
why he was tempted, we do not know. We know pride is central to it, and he tried to "be like God." I don't believe this involved trying to overthrow God at all. I believe God Himself is the One who started war, at that very moment. We are
clearly stuck right in the middle of it! You find this to be true, hence your questions.
What we CAN know is how Lucifer's actions act as an example to us, what our differences are, and why that makes him so mad at US; but that goes beyond your questions ...
Peace to you, but not the artificial and cheap substitute for Peace that is merely sweeping it all under the rug. Kudos to you for being sensitive to your Parents needs! Might I suggest to you, that you share this subject with them
only after you're finished wrestling with it? You have shown them that they've never really plumbed the depths of this subject, and that should serve to BUILD their Faith! Eventually. In the meantime, not smashing it to bits counts as "walking in Love." You're off to a good start
